After Accidentally Revealing Its Super Bowl Ad, The Verge Decides to Leave It Live

Regional buy is a big step for the publisher

For most news sites, accidentally publishing an article too early can be embarrassing but rarely reveals too much. For The Verge, though, such a slip today revealed something truly surprising: a Super Bowl ad the site has in the works.

The tech site owned by Vox Media accidentally (or "accidentally" if you're the skeptical type) debuted its ad today in a post entitled "DNP Verge Super Bowl ad." The 30-second spot is about "the future," as the post's placeholder text explains:

"TKTK here's our first-ever Super Bowl ad. It's about the future," the quickly deleted writeup from editor Nilay Patel said. "Here is a long story about making it, and buying it, and how modern media is really just a vicious ouroboros of narrative devices designed to dull the throbbing pain of your team totally blowing the conference game."

Admittedly, that's not the most accurate summary of the spot itself, which you can watch for yourself below. A spokesman confirmed that "The Verge will be running a televised Super Bowl ad. The 30 second spot will air regionally. It will also run next Sunday on theverge.com and youtube.com/theverge."

Adweek Blog Network site FishbowlNY spotted the post, which was quickly deleted. The video remains up on YouTube, and Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff tweeted the spot with a Super Bowl hashtag:

The regional Super Bowl buy is notable for a new media company like Vox, which also publishes SB Nation, Polygon and Ezra Klein's Vox.com. This year's game will feature new, relatively small advertisers like website development company Wix and smartphone case-maker Mophie. (For more on Super Bowl advertisers, check out our Super Bowl Ad Tracker.)